Sermon for the Sixth Sunday after Pentecost

Preached at Grace and Canadochly on July 16, 2017
Preaching text: Matthew 13:1-8

I grew up a city boy, so I certainly can’t claim to be any expert on farming and agriculture. But I think I understand on at least a basic level. You till and plow a field, making it ready for planting. You plant the crops at a particular time of year; generations of farmers have recorded the exact week and day for optimal results and you follow that to the letter. You fertilize and in some cases water (artificially, as in irrigation) the crops as they grow. You use chemicals to drive off pests and weeds. And the end result, you hope, is a bumper crop of whatever you planted and worked so hard to produce.

In other words, it’s everything the sower in Jesus’ parable doesn’t do.

Now, we humans have been farming for thousands of years, so I don’t think this difference is one of their times and ways verses ours. I suspect strongly that any farmers hearing Jesus’ story would have reacted as we do. “That’s not how you sow seeds! It’s wasteful. It’s inefficient. If I was employing that sower, I’d fire him on the spot.”

Which is a big part of Jesus’ point.

The parable is about spreading the Word. It’s about evangelism. But the subtext of the parable is human nature, specifically our need to control everything and to succeed at everything. All that work that we put into growing crops, into agriculture, is intended to control the outcome. We want to see that bumper crop as often as possible and with good reason. That’s our food. That’s our means to survival. That’s the farmer’s means to make a living by selling those crops to people who need to eat them. All important things; all far too important to leave to chance.

So we use our science, we use our technology, we use our centuries of experiences to control the process to ensure an optimal outcome. Failure is not really an option. Many a farmer has faced that. Many a nation and society has experienced famine and the starvation that goes with it. These outcomes are to be avoided at all costs, so we work and we control and we do everything we can to ensure the opposite happens.

All that we do with agriculture we also want to do with people when it comes to spreading our faith. We want to ensure the outcome. We don’t want to fail. We want control.

So we create all these gimmicks and programs and evangelism/outreach plans, all intended to ensure a bumper crop of new converts to sit in our pews. Certain things must be ensured to maximize the outcome. They must be like us; they must want the same things. They can’t rock the boat. They can’t change anything. They just have to show up, sit in the pew, sing the old songs, and put money in the plate. And our church will thrive again.

And none of these sure-fire programs have EVER worked.

Because human beings are not corn or wheat or barley or hay or any other crop. They are thinking feeling creatures who are very savvy about being tricked, manipulated, and used. They do not want to be controlled. They are very quick to figure out that our gimmicks and programs are really about us and not about them.

Jesus shows us the alternative. His sower sprays the seeds everywhere. And a good chunk of it goes into places where it will not thrive. But what does land where it needs to explodes in great success. Jesus’ parable highlights that salvation is not something we can control. The Spirit will act where it will and will save whom it chooses. As he says in John’s Gospel, the Spirit is like the wind, “blow[ing] where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes.”

Truth be told, we don’t even control our own salvation, let alone someone else’s. Yes, we are baptized and we’ve taken those promises on ourselves in confirmation. But we sin all the time. Those promises we made in those rites and sacrament, we break them. If our own salvation was up to us, we’d be toast. But it’s not. It’s up to the Spirit. It’s God’s choice. We cannot control it.

So it is with everyone else. God chooses. And it is he who knows when and where a person becomes good soil. That’s something else about us humans. We don’t stay the same. Allow me to introduce you to Pastor Allen, age 15 (30 years ago). He’s arrogant, selfish, obnoxious, and painfully insecure; crazy about girls and WAY too shy to do anything about it. I'm not that person anymore.

Or I can introduce you to my friend John, who at that same age of 15 was a red-meat-eating gun-loving Go-'Merica Republican, who now at age 45 thinks that President Trump is an idiot.

Or my friend James who at age 21 was quite the libertine: new girl on his arm (and in his bed) every week, drank like a fish (and I don’t mean water), smoked weed when he could and is now a red-blooded pro-family Republican with two adorable kids and thinks President Trump walks on water.

And here we all are, 25 years ago. James and John are the first two on the left.

And yeah, that's me in the front center.

We don’t stay the same and it is God who knows when we are good soil or something else. Which is why he calls us to spread the seed of his Word randomly and constantly. We never know when who we are and what we do will plant the seed that the Spirit will grow, because that’s not up to us.

I know that drives us crazy. Myself included. I have many friends who are of other faiths or are atheist. I love them all and I care about what may become of them when they die. But I know that God in his infinite mercy chose me to be among his elect. I know that God is love and that he loves each one of them with same fire and passion he does me. I must trust that one day somehow He will find them good soil for his Word. My job, our job, is to scatter the seed, to be Christians, and to be all that that means. To, as I said last week, do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with God. That’s our seed. And God will take it and run with it. His goal is to save us all. We have our part. Let’s play it. Amen.